The Digital Fix: Television

Supergirl 1.10: Childish Things

I’m loving this show overall but for me, this has been the most uninteresting episode to date. I don’t want to go as far as saying it’s a bad episode but I just found it quite boring.

Childish Things is all about Winn, Kara’s computer tech work colleague. Winn’s father, a terrorist called Toyman, escapes prison using a couple of Yo-Yo’s and goes on the run looking for his estranged son. Winn has been secretive about his father and fears that he is somehow pre-destined to be like his murderous dad.

After police question Winn on his fathers whereabouts, assuming Schott Sr will be in some kind of cahoots with Schott Jr, Kara learns about Winn’s terrible childhood and his father’s mad killing spree after having his toy ideas stolen. This brings the characters closer together but then leads to an interesting and awkward moment when Winn goes in for a kiss with Kara and she (unsurprisingly) rejects him. The show seems to have a subtlety and intelligence to it and I don’t feel like Winn will simply become a spurned love interest-turned supervillain but it’ll be interesting to see if Winn does one day become a villainous threat to the Woman of Steel?

In other news, Cat has offered Lucy Lane a job at Cat Co. this doesn’t go down too well with Jimmy… sorry, James Olson. Jimmy is still my sticking point with this show, yes he’s a super sexy great guy but I feel like there is something just a tiny bit passive aggressive about the character. Stuff like not wanting his girlfriend, Lucy, working alongside the girl he has a crush on, Kara, could come across as slightly douchey if they’re not careful. Though it’s more about his conflicted emotions, Jimmy needs to know he can’t have his cake and eat it!

A more interesting aspect of this weeks episode for me is Hank/Martian Manhunter who – while on a side mission to investigate Budget Tom Cruise Maxwell Lord’s secret facility – has to use his powers to wipe a security guards memory, leaving the man with no knowledge of his family or even who he is. Its nice to see Hank have to do something like this for the greater good and his regret, fear and anguish about what he’s done is nicely played. Hank also makes a great point, when telling Alex why he doesn’t show himself to the world as Martian Manhunter, he says everyone loves Supergirl but it might be different for someone who doesn’t look like a ‘blonde cheerleader.

This episode is all about building depth to Winn’s character and it doesn’t exactly fail in this but, quite frankly, I’m not interested enough in Winn to engage with his story… or perhaps the episode isn’t engaging enough to get me interested in Winn’s story? Plus the nice guy with evil father cliché is soooo boring! They’ve done such a good job at developing Cat, Alex and Hank slowly over the past few episodes but Childish Things feels like a rushed info-dump of development for the least interesting member of the gang.

It's a testament to how utterly tedious I find the character of Winn that it was only in this episode that I realised who he (more or less) is. He’s not simply a sometimes creepy self proclaimed nice guy, tech whiz… he’s Winn Schott and Winn is short for Winslow! So he was yet another comic book character hiding in plain sight! Though he is massively removed from his comics name sake, the moment the penny dropped I became curious to see how his story could progress in the future, with his potential to become a very personally motivated adversary for Supergirl. I’d actually rather he didn’t go this route, not because I’m especially fond of him but more because it feels a weak option.

Not a terrible episode but felt like a bit of a dip in a show otherwise improving with each week. Roll on the next episode…

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